New Orleans Terror Attack

Photo of Bourbon Street, New Orleans

There was a terror attack in New Orleans today. An American citizen, who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (despite its largely defunct state), drove a truck into a crowd; killing at least ten and injuring several others.

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Transcript

Hey Peter Zeihan here coming to you from New Zealand. It’s New Year’s Day. Back in the States, there was just a terror attack in New Orleans where an American citizen driving a rented truck plowed into a crowd, killing at least ten, injuring a few dozen others. He pledge allegiance to Islamic State, which is, you know, largely defunct in Syria these days. 

 Just want to put this in context. You know what it is? What to expect. 15, almost 20 years ago, the folks that represented the Islamic State at the time called upon Muslims all over the world to rise up and butcher Christians, saying that, go get a gun, can’t get a gun, get a knife and you can’t get a knife, get a car and just do as much mayhem as you can. 

Over a decade later in North America, it’s happened three times. Twice in the United States, once in Edmonton, Canada. Two things to keep in mind here. Number one, training operatives to actually do mass casualty events like, say, 911 takes time, takes resources. And when the people doing the training are in a different hemisphere and don’t control a state, it’s kind of a heavy carry. 

And so it just hasn’t happened very often. And when it does happen, it happens closer to the zone in question, like in places like Paris. Second, and I know this is going to be really radical at their core. Most people are not murderous assholes. So if you have a group who claims to represent all Muslims, who says, everyone go out and do something and you know, there’s hundreds of millions of Muslims and it happens three times. 

Math people. So is it horrible? Yep. Is it the start of something new? Absolutely not. 

One Ship Inspection Could Unravel Global Maritime Shipping

Photo of a ship in a port in Helsinki, Finland

The Nordic nations are teasing a new initiative of inspecting ships leaving Russia’s St. Petersburg port for insurance and environmental compliance. This may seem insignificant, but it could disrupt shipping on a global scale.

Russia has relied on its shadow fleet (uninsured and aging tankers) to export oil after the sanctions began; this new initiative aims to curb Russian income and disrupt funds for the war in Ukraine. But what happens when one of these countries completes an inspection and decides to confiscate or detain one of these ships? We’re talking about uncharted maritime territory…and it could get messy very quickly as countries start to take maritime security and trade into their own hands.

A return to localized maritime security enforcement and controls won’t look the same everywhere. The Western Hemisphere and the Nordic countries will experience some shortages but be mostly fine. The Mediterranean’s future would rely on cooperation between Italy, France and Turkey. Places that are heavily reliant on energy and food imports (i.e. East Asia) could face economic collapse or famine.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand. We finally got a break in the weather, just in time for the emerald pools, which are, you know, volcanic and super stinky. Anyway, on the 17th, 18th, of December, representatives from all the Nordic nations, plus Poland and Britain. So that’s, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, basically got together and said that they’re going to start checking ships that are coming out of Saint Petersburg port in the Baltic Sea, for things like insurance and compliance with environmental regulations. 

In order to disrupt the shuttle fleet, the shuttle fleet is how the Russians are getting their cruise to market since they canceled by pipeline, and they can’t use Western maritime insurance or navigation aids. They basically, have to get insurance from the Russian government, the Chinese government or the Indian government. And there’s a suspicion that no one is actually issuing policies that pieces are just sailing. 

They get out of the port, regardless of whether or not they have a policy. Not the Indians, the Chinese and the Russians have never actually paid out on one before. So if there was an accident, the idea is that there would be no one there to help pay for the cleanup. But more to point, the Shadow fleet is how the Russians get their money. 

They basically have uninsured or under-insured old aging tankers, that evade everything that the Europeans are trying to do to shut Russian oil out of their systems, and especially to deny, income to the Russians as they’re launching a war in Ukraine. Will it work? It all depends upon how the Nordics and the poles and the Brits decide to handle enforcement. 

So if a ship doesn’t have anything, what does that mean? You confiscate it, you take it into port. That would be getting into some very interesting territory, that it would be uncharted in the modern age. The whole idea of globalization as created by and then guaranteed by the United States since World War two, is that anyone can sail anywhere at any time. 

And you don’t necessarily have to have insurance, although that’s a really good idea. And if the Russians don’t have it, it’s then up to the Nordics to decide what to do. And if the ships are confiscated, because they don’t have something that is not technically illegal, or they haven’t complied with something that just someone said that they needed to do. 

We enter into a new phase of naval maritime transport. If if, if, if we go down that road that there’s no reason for any country really in the world to not take a ship that they like the look of or don’t like the look of unless they fear the consequences of whoever happens to own the ship or whoever happens to, have the ship registry. 

The registry is a joke. Those are countries like Guinea Bissau and Panama, basically places where you can basically file a web address for free, and officially register your ship if you’re going to replace the system with something that actually means something that has to be a country that has a navy that can actually protect the shipping and are only a handful of countries in the world that can even pretend to do that in a regional basis. 

And only one U.S. that could do it on a global basis. And since the United States does not dependent on international transport for most of its economic strength, it’s a stretch to think that the United States would do that unless it was paid a whole lot of money. And so if the Nordics do this, it is the end of the globalized system as we know it. 

Now, keep in mind that I think we’re going here anyway. There is too much shipping. There are too many powers or too many people wanting revisions, and the US has lost too much interest. And we’re probably going to a naval freefall in the not too distant future. I’m not saying that this is the trigger, but I think it’s time to start talking about what the next system looks like and what the consequences are. 

For the United States, if it happened today, it would hurt. Most of the naval shipments that come into the United States are large container ships carrying manufactured goods from Asia. So we’d have to get by without things like phones and computers and all that. The more valuable stuff eventually would be flown. But for all the bulk stuff, you know, your stereos, your cars, you’re going to be having some problems until that manufacturing capacity is rebuilt in North America, something we’re working on, something that is unlikely to be finished before the end of the decade. 

So, you know, timing matters here, too. For other countries, this would be an absolute disaster. Most of the countries of the world, especially in East Asia, import the vast majority of their energy and material inputs. Some of them are even dependent upon significant food inputs, or at least the inputs they need to grow their own food. 

So if this happened to China, for example, we would easily have a deindustrialization, or collapse, complete with famine in a very short period of time measured in months, not even years. 

What takes its place is probably regional groupings, where either the seas are safe or everyone’s on the same side, and agrees with the rules of the games are, that looks really good for the Western Hemisphere. 

That looks pretty good for the Scandinavian bucket. And in the Mediterranean might get a little dicey based on how relations between or among the Italians, the French and the Turks go. If they agree that they can, work together. That looks great. And if they can’t, You get two different mediterranean’s that shoot at one another, which, if you know your history has happened many, many, many, many, oh, so many times. 

So, I can’t wait until the first time that Sweden or Finland or Poland decide that a ship that’s sailing by their coast isn’t doing something right. I want to see what they do. This is one of those many things that could all fall apart in a day. If the stars are aligned. 

So stay tuned. This is probably not something you’re gonna have to wait for me to comment on, because if it does go down, a lot of things are going to break real soon.

The Russian Navy Leaves Syria for Benghazi…

Photo of Russian Naval Infantrymen on a boat

There are reports stating the Russian naval fleet might have found a new home (since their last one in Syria is no longer available). This new location is Benghazi, Libya and boy oh boy would I love to see that happen.

Russia has used Syrian ports for decades, but since the new Syrian government is not so friendly to the Russians…they must leave. The only viable option the Russians have is to move the fleet over to Benghazi.

Benghazi doesn’t offer much, other than a place to park. So, no repairs would be done, no significant naval operations could be carried out, and resupplying would be a joke. Oh, and relocating to Libya places the Russian fleet within range of NATO forces.

So, the Russians can hide out in Benghazi for a bit and avoid embarrassment in Syria, but they shouldn’t stick around for too long… or maybe they should.

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Transcript

Hey Everybody Peter Zeihan, New Zealand, Tongariro Circuit, blah blah blah. This is a quick take. I just found out that, the scuttlebutt in the Middle East is that the Russians are going to relocate their fleet to Benghazi, Libya. Quick background. The Russians have been operating out of the ports of Banias and Tartus in, Syria for about a decade, and they’ve been using those as the primary supply points to participate in the Syrian civil War, where they are responsible for, among other things, carpet bombing civilians and probably killing, somewhere around 100,000 people in Aleppo specifically. 

Anyway, the new government that is taking form is a group of militant groups that are opposed by the Russians. So the Russians are getting the hell out of Dodge because they’re not completely stupid. Anyway, I’m digging this Benghazi story. Let me explain. The fleet, the Russian fleet has to go somewhere. They can’t stay, in Syrian waters, for long. 

And their options are limited. If they were to try to go through the Turkish straits to get to the black Sea, which would be for some of these ships, their home port, that is not allowed, because there is now a war on in the Black Sea. And under the treaty, of Montreal, that the Turks adjudicate and control. 

No warships can come through without Turkish. Get go. And the Turks back. The militant groups that are kicking out the Syrian government and the Russians. So can’t go there. You can sail all the way around Europe, to where the Northern Fleet headquarters are in Murmansk and Archangel. But, the Russian ships don’t have much range, and it’s highly likely that most of the fleet wouldn’t be able to make it. 

So they would have to dock to refuel and resupply and European ports, all of which are NATO and the, the likelihood of a NATO country just seizing the ships very high. So two humiliations that the Russians are trying to avoid. So that leaves Benghazi and Italy, where, again, the Russians are participating in the local civil war. Here’s the thing. 

But Ghazi doesn’t have the necessary port facilities to do full resupply and certainly can’t do repairs. So the Russians would have to build that when they did it in Syria. It took several years and several billion dollars. So in the meantime, the Russian fleet would just sit in Libya, rusting while support facilities are built. And with the way things are going between NATO in Russia, the chances of there being a bit of a spark down the line pretty good, and the Russians will have repositioned their most capable naval assets within easy striking distance of the French Navy and the Italian Air Force. 

So in order to avoid some significant embarrassment today, the Russians are arguably doing the most stupid thing that I could possibly come up with, and I really hope they do it.

Cover photo by Wikimedia Commons

The Chinese Cut Off Drone Exports

Image of a drone firing missiles

The Chinese Government has moved toward implementing an export ban on drones and drone components, with an eye toward making supply issues a particular headache for the United States and the Ukrainians.

In regard to the latter group, Kyiv has had particular success in utilizing drones in their war against Russia. From reconnaissance to swarm attacks to providing targeting data for UAVs, the Ukrainian war effort has been building and burning through thousands of drones.

While the design and rebuild activity is happening primarily within Ukraine, several key components: motors, flight controls, and especially the batteries and made in China. China’s massive supply of affordable parts is what drove the Ukrainians to make up for shortages within their arsenals with drones in the first place, and you can bet Moscow has been pushing China heavily to stop the flow of these parts to Ukraine.

As for the Americans, the Chinese are looking to respond to the bevy of tech export restrictions pushed through by the Biden administration, and Beijing is bracing for an onslaught of new Trump tariffs. Things like drone components are one of the few levers Beijing has in this fight.

But what will the ultimate outcomes be? This is an excellent opportunity for the United States and others in the West to start building out their own manufacturing capacity for these components—a win for both strategic and economic reasons. Even if the Chinese were everyone’s best buddies, the current Chinese system is dying. Literally. The Chinese government cannot hold back the impacts of the collapse of the population growth rate, and the Chinese economy is undeniably slowing down. The global economy’s reliance on Chinese overproduction is coming to an end, regardless of whether anyone wants it to or not.

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The Future of Singapore

Image of a city in Singapore

From humble beginnings to a global trading hub, Singapore has solidified itself as a key player in the region and beyond.

This success story is one of geographic fortune – plopped along major maritime routes between East Asia and Europe. Foreign involvement and relations helped promote further growth, via a British naval base and strong ties with the US during the Cold War.

As China’s growth exploded, Singapore jumped on its coattails, benefiting from the oil trade and industrial expansion. Using those trade revenues, they developed a skilled workforce and established themselves as a regional financial hub.

There’s a lot to look forward to for the Singaporeans, between the growth in regional trade and peaceful neighbors with complimentary economies. They’ll need to overcome the collapse of China and oil trade risks, but I would expect Singapore to do very well in the years to come.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the slopes of Mount Taranaki in New Zealand’s Egmont National Park. Today I am taking an entry from, the St Peter Forum on, the Patreon page. Specifically, it’s what do I think the future of Singapore is, strategically and economically. Okay. I taranaki’s peeking out. Mount can be a little shy. 

Anyway, broadly positive. So quick, let me dial back. You know, 200 years, there wasn’t a Singapore. It was a small fishing village and some marshy islands off the tip of the Malay Peninsula. But the Brits put a base there. And as the world became wealthier and there was more trade between east and west, most of it transported by water, because moving things by water is about 1/12, the cost of it by truck. 

And basically everything between Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China and Europe passed by. And so it emerged as the single most strategic piece of real estate on the planet. And so during the Cold War, the Americans pursued a very tight alliance with the Singaporeans and the Singaporeans because they couldn’t resist a land invasion from Malaysia, which kind of wanted to conquer them. 

Signed the deal and built a custom aircraft carrier berth for the American super carriers. Now, in the post-Cold War world, Singapore has continued to do well because this has been China’s time to shine. Basically, the Chinese between 1990 and 2020 had a huge number of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, but no youth and no retirees. 

So all the money that you would normally spend on raising the next generation or retiring the previous one was spent on consumption and especially on industrial expansion. And the Singaporeans were able to cut out of all of that. And of course, the oil trade from Persian Gulf to Northeast Asia got them plenty of money on the other end, maintaining things like oil depots so that everyone could get whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. 

Now those days are rapidly coming to an end. The Chinese are dying out. The demographic movement that was through the 1990s to the 2020s, is over. And we’re now looking at the dissolution of China as a modern nation state over the next ten years, and the disappearance, probably of the Han ethnicity before the end of the century. 

It’s not bad, and the numbers keep getting worse every time they release new data. But the oil trade’s probably in danger, too, because without the Americans keeping the Persian Gulf open, the likelihood of Saudi Arabia and Iran going at it is pretty robust. And that’s half of globally traded oil that all of a sudden is in some degree of danger. 

So the old methods that the Singaporeans have been using to generate their wealth are somewhat limited. But two things to keep in mind. First of all, Singapore hasn’t simply just been taking rent out of everyone passing buying in. You know, they have used all that income to train up one of the most sophisticated workforces in the world. 

  

And the most precision instruments that humans build typically come from Singapore. Very, very high end manufacturing that slots into what other people do. In addition, it’s a financial hub that serves not just itself, but all of Southeast Asia and to a lesser degree, a lot of East Asia as well. And those two sectors are going to be incredibly important moving forward, because as the Chinese literally die away and as international trade shrinks in a globalizing world, regional trade is going to be more important. 

And unlike the French and the Germans, which have duked it out a few times, or the Koreans in the Japanese or the Japanese in the Chinese or the Chinese, and really anyone, the countries of Southeast Asia have not gone to war with one another since the time of the Kuma Kingdoms centuries ago, and there’s certainly nothing in the post-colonial era. 

So you have a number of large states with a reasonably developed infrastructure, with above average educational levels for their socioeconomic status that are in close proximity. They don’t have a history of going to war with one another. And in addition, most of Southeast Asia is islands or peninsulas. There’s a lot of mountains and a lot of jungle, so these countries can’t go at each other in a conventional way if they have a fight. 

And so it’s all diplomatic. But the best part is because they can’t get to each other directly, they don’t have a lot of connecting infrastructure among them. So everything goes on the water. Well, if you’re trading between Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on water, it’s harder to have a fight and it’s easier to build multi-step supply chains. 

And so that’s what we have seen over the last 30 years. 

And Singapore slots into this very nicely with the finance, the managerial skills and above all else the high end manufacturing to make it all work. So you basically get Singapore with the high end stuff and the finance, and then you have places like Thailand that do the middle Malaysia is rising up to try to be the next Thailand. 

At the lower level. You’ve got Vietnam who is desperate to skip stages of production, mostly out of its, pathological need to compete with China, and where 40% of all college grads are already Stem grads and they’re already moving into low end semiconductors. And then for the lower end work, like assembly, Indonesia and Myanmar look really good. 

So everything that the Southeast Asians need to succeed is right there at hand. And what they might also need things like resources and food. Australia and New Zealand are very close by. And if Singapore maintains its relationship with the United States, then there’s even, to a degree, an external security guarantor that the locals can call upon. 

Japan will probably come along for the party as well. So this is arguably after North America, the part of the world that I am most bullish on for the next 50 years. And I’m really curious to see what all the locals are going to make of it.

There Goes the Canadian Government

Photo of the Canadian Parliament building in winter

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to demote former Finance Minister and deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has triggered a new round of speculation over his political future.

Trudeau’s Liberal Party currently rules as a minority government. While this has emerged as the norm in Federal politics in recent decades, the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP)’s decision to remove their support from Trudeau in September has made his position all the more precarious. While the NDP declined to move toward a vote of no confidence in the Fall, Freeland’s exit is equally unsettling as it is exciting for those within government.

It’s not just that Freeland is easily one of the most effective minister in Canada’s modern history; nor the fact that Freeland is one of the most intelligent members of any global government. She is. But Freeland has been part of a very loyal cabinet of an increasingly unpopular Prime Minister–until that loyalty was not returned.

On Monday the 16th, Freeland released a public letter not only announcing her resignation, but–in typical Canadian fashion–effectively calling her former boss an out-of-his-league idiot. But politely. Canadian-ly.

Those within the Liberal Party and without have smelled the blood in the water. Part of Trudeau’s ability to hold onto the reins of party leadership has been the lack of a clear and effective challenger. That may very well be changing.

As Canada faces a bevy of upcoming challenges, chief among them Trump’s tariff threats and USMCA/NAFTA2.0 renegotiation talks. Not having Freeland at the helm of managing both processes is terrifying for most serious folks within Canada’s political establishment, and it should be.

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Israel’s Strategy for Iranian Nukes

Photo of Israeli Troops overlooking an area

With the Iranians eyeing nukes, why haven’t regional powers like the Israelis stepped in and squashed those dreams?

Targeting Iran’s nuclear capabilities isn’t so straightforward. Plutonium is a byproduct of civilian nuclear reactors (and they’re not going to target those), uranium is abundant and can be sourced fairly easily, and uranium enrichment centrifuges can be easily moved…so, targeting their nuclear infrastructure is impractical.

Israel has opted to disrupt Iran’s nuclear hopes in other ways. They eliminate key experts via assassination programs, launch cyberattacks and keep tactical airstrikes in their back pocket. And given Iran’s declining industrial capabilities, this nuclear program serves more as a bargaining chip than a serious attempt at weaponization.

Should Iran fly a little too close to the sun and get a nuke within arm’s reach, you should expect Israel and Saudi Arabia to quickly put them in their place.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from three sisters in Taranaki, New Zealand. And today we’re taking a question from the Patreon family. Specifically why Israel hasn’t struck at Iranian nuclear facilities in an attempt to prevent the Iranians from ever developing a bomb in the first place. And there’s a number of reasons for this. But the core issue is this. 

And there’s too much to go after to do it reliably. So let’s go through the materials of what you need to to make a meaningful bomb. First of all, you need the raw materials, either uranium or plutonium. Now, any civilian nuclear power reactor is going to generate a lot of plutonium as a byproduct. So we’ve got about a one gigawatt, power plant, which for a nuclear power plant is pretty much a run of the mill. 

You’re going to generate enough waste plutonium every year to make about a dozen plutonium bombs. So unless you’re going to take out the nuclear facilities, you’re not going to be able to remove that from their supply chain. And, bombing a civilian nuclear power plant obviously comes with a few consequences. As for uranium, uranium is one of the most common materials on Earth. 

And so it’s very easy to source. In the early Cold War days, when we thought it was rare, we, the United States, cut a deal with the Australians who at the time had most of the global production, basically cornered the market. But since then, it’s been discovered in all kinds of places. And the world’s largest producers are Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia and China. 

So, you know, removing those countries from the mix. Yeah, I’m not going to happen. Even if you did. Ultimately, you only need a few tonnes of the ore to generate the yellowcake that you need, in order to generate the finished metal that you need for lutetium. So going after the raw materials really isn’t a play. Moving up the value added scale, however, you get some more options because, you know, these raw materials don’t do anything, by themselves. 

You need the system that’s necessary to purify and extract the plutonium from the waste material and then purified in the metal. There are a lot of chemicals you can go after there. But again, most of those are globally available under the civilian supply chain. So it’s a limited on the uranium front. 

If you have your raw uranium ore, you basically have to mix it with chlorine gas to make a material that you can then run through a centrifuge over and over and over and over to extract the specific type of uranium that is fissile, that can go into a bomb. Those centrifuges are definitely a weak point in the process that is restricted technology. 

And in order to have a weapons program of size, you also need a lot of them. Now, the problem here is it doesn’t matter where those things are. You could have a cluster of a few thousand in one place. You could disperse it. And whenever people talk about striking Iran’s weapons systems, the Iranians just move the centrifuges around because they can be easily individually loaded into trucks and move wherever they want. 

So, you know, you do a single round of airstrikes, you might get some of them. You’re certainly not going to get all of them. And you only need so much of this stuff in order to make a bomb. Then you’ve got the the metallurgy. There are different types of weapons systems, that use plutonium and uranium, and there’s different ways that you can combine them to make an explosive product. 

But this is an engineering question. And ultimately, this is where the Israelis have chosen to focus. Can’t go after the raw materials. You can’t go after the equipment. You go after the people with the experience of how to turn these processed materials into something that can go boom. And so Israel focuses on what it does well. Instead of surgical strikes, they have an assassination program. 

And whenever an Iranian nuclear scientist starts to get a little bit too productive, he tends to, fall down some stairs after getting shot in the back of the head with some bullets. So it’s not that the Israelis aren’t doing anything to contain this threat, it’s that they’re striking the weak point in the system, which is the personnel. 

One of the wild things about Iran is that their industrial base today is significantly less sophisticated than it was back in 1980. This is a country that has been in long term industrial decline for any number of reasons, sanctions of which are only one part of it. And that means the Israelis have found it actually pretty easy to pick off individual people who are involved in the weapon system in order to snarl the whole system. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they do. They also engage in a degree of sabotage and cyber hacks. And if push came to shove, I have no doubt that they’re willing to do tactical airstrikes. But you’re talking about something that can be dispersed. You’re talking about something that once you do start going after it, the, receiving country, Iran in this case, has a vested interest in keeping the system as dispersed as possible and then accelerating the work. 

So until now, the Iranian nuclear program has mostly been a negotiating chip that they are willing to trade away in exchange for a broader deal specifically with the United States. And that’s one of the reasons why this technology, which was developed in the 40s, still hasn’t been replicated in the Persian Gulf. There’s also a strategic side to this. 

Israel is already a nuclear power. And if the Israelis ever really did feel that the Iranians were getting close, they’d probably use their own systems to make sure that Iran could never cross the threshold and they’d do a preemptive nuclear strike. The other side of the strategic question is Iran is not alone in the neighborhood. Closer to home. 

Just across the Persian Gulf are the Saudis and the Saudis and the Iranians don’t care for each other very much. And the big difference between these two is that Saudi Arabia has much deeper pockets. So if Push ever did really come to shove, and it did look like Iran was going to develop a functional weapon, not only would they be risking a preemptive Israeli nuclear strike, but the Saudis would probably just go out, write a check, and buy some nukes from another country, most notably Pakistan. 

So for Iran, the nuclear card is not nearly as valuable as most people seem to think it is, because they know if they even try to draw it from the deck, they’re gonna get hammered real hard. So this is something I worry about. Not really. And whenever there’s something in the Middle East that I don’t worry about, I call that a win. 

The Future of Syria and Turkey’s Role

Image of a line of Turkey Flags with kids riding on the back of a tram in Istanbul

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The fall of the Assad regime has left a fragmented and chaotic landscape in its wake. The punchline is that Syria’s future does not lie within its borders; a regional power from outside will need to step in and help.

Syria is highly fragmented and lacks a dominant force or unifying government. Between the Alawites, Christians, Kurds, ISIS, and multiple Arab factions, there’s not much cohesion going on. And then you mix in some foreign entities protecting their interests, like the US running some short-term operations in the region and the Israelis striking Syria’s military assets to prevent any future threat from a new regime.

Turkey is the power we want to watch most closely. Given their close ties to Syria and support for various Arab factions, deeper involvement could influence a settlement. Without Turkey as a security guarantor, Syria risks remaining a stateless zone; with all the different groups in Syria, fighting will only get worse from here (and it could get really ugly).

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the slopes of Mount Taranaki in outside of Plymouth, New Zealand. Plymouth is right over there somewhere. Anyway, today we’re going to continue talking about the consequences of the fall of the Syrian government specifically. Now we’re going to talk about military operations that the Israelis and the Americans are carrying out. 

The Americans are doing something that’s fairly short term and probably is going to be short lived. They’re taking advantage of the fact that the Russians have evacuated all of their aircraft back to Russia, so that they can now operate in a completely uncontested airspace, and they’re hitting the remnants of the Islamic State as hard as they possibly can everywhere they possibly can, because the Americans know that before long, regardless of who president is in the United States, they’re going to be closing down their operations in Syria. 

Right now, there are fewer than a thousand operators, American special forces, primarily, that are operating in the country, primarily helping the Syrian Kurds defend themselves both against the regime, which is now defunct, against ISIS, which is still a problem, and against Turkey, who is an ally. In fact, the Turks have actually started carrying out more direct operations against the Syrian Kurds, who are actually under American protection. 

So, you know, messy, messy, messy situation. Anyway, what the Americans are going to do is basically close this down because there is no way that there can be an American operation in Syria, if the Turks absolutely refuse to help with logistics. So probably with over the course of the next year, the Americans will be gone completely. The Israelis of course, are here for the long haul. 

And their operation is designed to destroy all industrial level weaponry that the Syrians have. And they’ve already done just about a thousand airstrikes since the Assad government fell. They’ve destroyed the entire Syrian navy. They’ve destroyed the entire Syrian air Force, including transport aircraft. And now they’re going after ammo dumps whenever and wherever they can. And since Syria is a state that they’ve been in a de facto state of Cold War with, for decades, they’ve got very good Intel on where those depots are, and they’re hitting absolutely everything to make sure that whatever the next iteration of the Syrian government is, none of these weapons could ever be used against Israel. 

It’s a policy that’s going to be very, very successful, but it will come at a cost. I mean, yes, by completely destroying all the military materiel, Syria won’t be able to field a traditional conventional force. And no, nothing shy of that could really threaten the Israelis. Anyway, the problem is what happens with political and economic consolidation in the post Assad environment in Syria. 

Because if one side has a very significant military advantage, because they inherit the tanks and the jets and the missiles and the mortars and the artillery and all of that fun stuff, they could probably impose themselves as the de facto military authority over the bulk of the country in about a year. But if all of that equipment is gone, then we still just have a multi-sided civil war, just without the Syrian government being led by Assad. 

And if you look at the situation where we are today, it’s already pretty shattered. You’ve got the Alawites who used to be part of the old regime, who have pretty much decamped. Damascus enforced probably 80% of them have already fled back to their homeland on the coast. You’ve got the Christians in the mountains to the east of that. 

You’ve got the Druze in the south around their mountains. You’ve got different Arab groups. There’s one in Dara down in the south that is independent from the group that has done all the lightning attacks, and that group controls, Aleppo ham and Hamas. Hamas. Different thing. And then there’s a yet another group that is more directly sponsored by the Turkish government. 

Not to be confused. The Pts, which is a group sponsored by the Turkish government, controls and Aleppo, and then you’ve got, of course, ISIS out in the desert and the Kurds in the northeast. So this is still a multivariate, multi-sided, very dynamic situation. And by removing the military equipment from the conversation, the Israelis are making damn sure that no one faction can easily take over. 

So they’re going to try to do this diplomatically. The group, under Turkish sponsorship, with a little indirect nudging from the United States, is trying to get everybody around the table to have a common conversation about what a post-assad government might look like. The word elections is even being used, although I wouldn’t hold my breath. But this isn’t a rock. 

This isn’t a country where there’s an American military occupation to force a security deal. There isn’t a huge amount of oil waiting to be produced to grease the wheels, to. So that you can have an economic angle to the unification. This is a knock down, drag out civil war between various factions that have never gotten along and have only been under the same flag because the Assad government was so brutal and tortured and killed anyone who said otherwise. 

The chances of this working out well without a single security guarantor are thin. The one possible exception would be if the Turks get more directly involved after all, two of those Arab groups and the Arabs are 60, 65% of the population do ultimately get a lot of their equipment and funding from Turkey. So if the Turks wanted to impose something, then you’ve got 10% of the population that’s Christian, maybe 10 to 15%. 

  

That’s Alawite, maybe another 10 to 15%. That’s Kurdish. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe with Turkish good offices and a lot of cash, they could form this into something that they could tolerate. More likely it’s going to be split apart and never really re congeal into a single state. And if you’re looking for a stateless space to generate something like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, it will be perfect. 

Oh, yeah. One more thing. In a multi-sided civil war where no side has a technical, numerical or especially technological advantage over the others, once people realize they’re in kind of a stalemate, they start going after each other’s civilian populations and infrastructure. And this is in a country that’s already been in a civil war for over a decade, already has probably a half 1 million to 1 million dead, and already has about one third of its population displaced. 

The Turks are going to be looking to repatriate many of the refugees that they’re hosting. That’s at least a couple million people. And so when sides start to decide to go after the people, the potential for just gross damage here is immense. Keep in mind that Syria is desert to semi-arid. And so when you start going after the civilian infrastructure, especially things like power and water, you can generate a situation where a lot of people die very, very quickly. 

Such as we saw with the Russian siege of Aleppo a few years ago. So there’s not a lot here to look forward to. If, the Turks cannot find a way to make this into a form that they find useful.

The Americans Didn’t Vote With Their Wallets

Picture of a pen next to a voter ballot

Well, it looks like American politics got drunk at the holiday party and forgot who it was. Exit polls from the latest election show a significant shift in voting patterns.

People didn’t vote with their wallets, but instead focused on cultural issues. So, the traditional breakdown of wealthier individuals voting Republican and lower-income voters leaning Democrat has gone out the window.

With both parties weak and focused on issues that fail to resonate with voters, people are choosing the candidate they perceive to be the lesser of two evils. This voting dynamic should correct itself in the next few election cycles (political alignments based on income should re-emerge), but a new party system in the US is likely on the horizon.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from New Zealand. And now that I’m safely in another country, I’ve got to do something about U.S. politics I thought I should share. We now have pretty good exit polling from all 50 states, and I can safely say that we’ve had a significant change, not just in voting patterns, but in organizational patterns for the US, politically. 

Traditionally, when we think about the last 70 years of our by party system, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. It’s the party of business and wealth. And if you’re working class or poorer on the dole, you’re more likely to vote Democrat, which is the party of the working man and the minorities. 

Yeah, that fell apart completely in this election and this election, regardless of what your income was up to, once you got into the 1%, they don’t track you anymore. So basically half $1 million or less had no bearing whatsoever. Every individual income category was within an eight point spread, right? Clustered around 50%, for who voted for who. 

So for the first time in American history and only one of a very rare number of times in global history, economic mix and income don’t shape your political leanings. Now, this isn’t sustainable. It’s fun for an election and maybe two and, it means a couple things. Number one, it means that the culture war is a big determining factor in how people vote. But more importantly, the idea that business and unions and rich and poor don’t shape our politics is, of course, asinine. So how people redefine how their income matters to them politically is probably gonna determine how we get out of this political mess that we’re in right now. 

Because right now we’ve got two very small, very brittle parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that are clustered around a very short list of issues that most of the country honestly doesn’t care about all that much. And we’ve been presented with a series of, voting for the lesser of two evils. Now, for me, as an independent, I’m comfortable with that. 

I’ve been doing that a long time. But for everybody else, it’s a shit show. So we’re going to see this shift over the next election cycle or two, and money will come back into it, for better or for worse income. We’ll come back to it. Identity. We’ll come back to it from an economic point of view. And then we get a fundamentally new party system. 

What will that look like? I have no idea. Literally, this has never happened before in American history. So we have no examples whatsoever to judge by. But I can guarantee you that we’re all going to find out together, and it’s going to be really uncomfortable.

Red Strings in Romania

Photo of far right candidate from Romanian election, Călin Georgescu

The most recent presidential election in Romania has been annulled, and surprise, surprise, it’s because of the Russians.

The Russians like to meddle about in everyone’s business, but some countries get the short end of the stick; Romania is one of them. Given its proximity to Ukraine and geographic access points, it provides a critical space that the Russians would love to control. By interfering with the elections, Russia can create divisions and weaken political resolve amongst the Romanians, with the hopes of then swooping up some Romanian territory.

Romania’s political environment isn’t squeaky clean to begin with, but the coalition of dominant parties would love to prevent Călin Georgescu from entering office. New elections will be held soon, and we’ll just have to wait and see how the Romanian people respond.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the crater of Mount Taranaki in Egmont National Park in New Zealand. And today we’re going to talk about Romania. Very, very short version. There’s this guy by the name of George Eskew who is a bit of a nationalist and kind of a dumbass. Really a no one, was in a couple of minor government, positions back in the 90s and really hasn’t done anything with his life since then. 

Anyway, he came in first in the first round of the presidential election that the, Romanians recently had. And, in recent days, the Electoral Commission of Romania has nullified that election. They’re going to hold it. And the reason is pretty straightforward. It’s flat out election interference by the Russians. And the Russians are trying different things in different places. 

They’re trying to see what sticks. And obviously not every culture is the same thing. So the playbook changes. But every once in a while they, like, bring everything together and push really, really, really hard to see if they can make a change. In the case of 

Romania, they pushed so hard it was really obvious. So something like 11,000 fake accounts were detected on social media with over, like, I think it was 17 million fake followers in a country with only 19 million people. 

So the interference was mad and it was obvious and it was found. And now we’re going to find out if the Romanians, once they realized the degree to which the Russians were trying to fuck around in their internal affairs, if they come up with a different opinion, there’s no guarantee that that’s how it’s going to go. 

Of course, people vote the way they vote. And when you tell people to go back to the polls so they can vote the right way, they tend to tend to get a little pissed off. Specifically, the leading Romanian parties have a reputation for corruption and being really cozy with one another, basically trading power back and forth. 

And they’ve recently joined forces to form a joint government to keep the presidency out of Georgia’s use hands. Or at least that’s the goal. Romania is generally considered one of the 2 or 3 most corrupt countries in the European Union. So the idea that there would be a robust protest vote makes a lot of sense. 

And it also makes sense that that protest vote would happen for the presidency. The Romanian system is a little bit like a flip of the French system. So in France is a very strong executive, a very strong president, but Parliament is elected separately. And if the Parliament and the presidency are from the same party, the president is in charge. 

The president picks the prime minister, the prime minister runs the government in Romania. It’s kind of the opposite, where the parliament, selects the prime minister, the president is elected separately. And if they’re from different parties, the president doesn’t have a lot of authority. Technically, he’s in charge of foreign affairs. Technically, he’s in charge of the military. 

But really, because they control the budget, the parliament still does that. So if you’re just you were to become president, he certainly wouldn’t control Parliament. And his room to maneuver would be somewhat limited. But for the Russians, this is enough, because Romania is one of the countries, after Ukraine that the Russians have shortlisted for the next wave of countries they want to invade. 

And anything that weakens the political resolve in Romania is something that can’t help but benefit the Russians in the long run. Now, specifically, the Russians are trying to weaken the resolve of the countries that border Romania to make it more difficult for the West in general to support Ukraine. And then, of course, the Russians ultimately want to make it to the Danube Delta, which would mean annexing somewhere between 20 and 30% of Romanian territory. 

Now, that’s a problem for another day. You can fault the Russians for being many things. But, planners, they’re always planners. 

So we’ll have a new first round elections pretty soon, and probably second round elections somewhere around the end of the year. 

And we will know what the Romanian people think of all of this before too long. 

Cover photo of Călin Georgescu by Wikimedia Commons